Despite Both Aston Martins Starting in the Top 10 Only 1 Point Scored
The mandatory summer break from racing came to an end this past weekend. After staging the last race, prior to the break, in the hills of the Ardennes, it was a total juxtaposition of venue that Formula 1 would pitch up at the seaside circuit of Zandvoort in north Holland. Zandvoort is a tight & twisty circuit and, unusually for Formula 1, has quite steep (18-19º) banking at a number of the corners. It also has historic links for Aston Martin as it is at Zandvoort where they made their F1 world championship debut, at the Dutch GP held in 1959, in cars using the DBR4 chassis and their own engines, which were driven by Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori. Both cars, sadly, never finished the race. It was hoped that the AMR24s would perform a lot better than that this year.
Despite it being a seaside location, it’s the North Sea that we’re talking about, so it was a wet and windy start to the second half of the season when the lights went green for Free Practice 1 (FP1) on Friday, meaning that there was no great rush for the cars to leave their garages. Eventually the Aston Martins took to the track, beginning the session amongst the dunes on wet weather tyres before switching to intermediate tyres. Then, towards the end of the hour, when the track began to dry, their final stints were done on soft tyres, with Stroll posting the 11th fastest time and Alonso the 15th. When the cars returned to the track for second practice (FP2) the drivers were greeted by much brighter, drier conditions, albeit with strong gusts of wind blowing, which caused a flurry of early scares for a number of drivers, culminating in Hulkenberg losing the rear of his Haas under braking, sliding across the gravel and thumping the wall – causing significant damage to the right-hand side of the car and bringing out the red flags. At that point, Alonso had set the 3rd fastest time and Stroll the 5th. The damaged car was soon cleared away & the session was restarted with both Aston Martin drivers gathering as much data as possible, first of all on medium tyres and ending on softs. FP2 ended with Alonso securing a respectable 6th and Stroll 11th. Post-session, the Stewards investigated an unsafe release by the Willaims team, for discharging Albon into the path of Stroll and banging wheels, but no further action was taken.
The following day further rain had soaked the circuit & it was raining at the start of FP3 meaning wet tyres were required. Despite these, Alonso had an early trip through the gravel after a slide off the track, underlining how tricky conditions were. Moments later though, Alonso moved to the top of the timesheets, on intermediate tyres, with team-mate Stroll close behind, in 3rd. With only 15 minutes of the session gone, Sargeant ran over a kerb & dipped a wheel on the grass, which unsettled his Williams & sent it sliding across the track and having a heavy impact with the barriers – bringing out the red flags. The car caught fire, but fortunately Sargeant was unhurt and managed to evacuate the stranded vehicle. It took the marshals until 2 minutes before the end of the session to clear the car and debris off the track, allowing it to restart. There was a frantic rush of activity as drivers and teams headed back out on track to get some late running in amid slightly brighter conditions. At the end Alonso was 5th fastest, with Stroll 8th. Later that day the sun finally started to break through when Qualifying got under way and the track was dry, allowing the Aston Martins to use the faster soft tyres. These seemed to work well and saw the 2 AMR24s securely into Q2 – Alonso finishing 8th, Stroll 10th. In Q2, both Aston Martins showed consistent performance on the improving track, finishing in the top 10 and getting into the final round – if only just for Alonso, who finished 10th, but Stroll delivered the fastest first sector time of any driver (purple) & finished 4th. In the final round (Q3), Aston Martin chose to send their drivers out only once, on a clear track. Unfortunately for Stroll, his was not a tidy lap and he was last (7th) of all the cars that had been out & 8/10ths of a second off the pace of the P1 driver. Alonso had gone 5th. At the end two other drivers had managed to displace the Aston Martins down the order, putting Alonso 7th & Stroll 9th. Norris in a McLaren claimed pole position for the race. After Qualifying, during scrutiny of Albon’s Williams it was discovered that the floor of his car was outside the limits of the regulatory volume. As a consequence he was disqualified from Qualifying and would start the race from the back of the grid. This elevated Stroll up to P8 on the grid for the race, behind Alonso. Hamilton was also handed a 3-place grid penalty for impeding Perez on track & would start 14th.
In the build-up to the race during his grid walk, Martin Brundle from Sky Sports got to speak with Lawrence Stroll who expressed his pleasure that the AMR24s appeared to have a good Qualifying (finishing each round in the top 10) and was hoping it would be reflected in the race. Then Brundle cheekily asked “when does Adrian Newey start with you?” Stroll Snr. tactfully replied “I did not say Adrian Newey was starting with me”!
At the all-important start of the race, Dutch home hero Verstappen got away better than pole-sitter Norris to take the lead. Further down the grid, although all the cars got away cleanly, the 2 Aston Martins were usurped by Gasly who had a great start and got ahead of the pair in the first sequence of corners. Stroll then lost another place, when he was passed by Sainz in the faster Ferrari, that had qualified poorly, but was showing all its potential speed in the race. Alonso then tried to retake the place back from Gasly a couple of times on the next lap, but it was in vain, as Gasly held on fairly. By lap 3 Alonso was 8th & Stroll was 10th. 3 laps later Hulkenberg had got within DRS range of Stroll & was threatening to pass, as was Sainz on Alonso. On lap 8, Sainz made the overtake & pulled ahead. Meanwhile, Hamilton had passed Hulkenberg and was gaining on Stroll, eventually passing him on lap 14 & then passing Alonso on lap 16. The Aston Martins were now 10th & 11th. At the front, to the displeasure of the home fans, Norris had patiently reeled Verstappen back in & retook the lead. By lap 25, some of the leading cars and Hulkenberg decided to come into the pits for a new set of hard tyres, that would take them all the way to the end of the race. This elevated Alonso and Stroll up the order (to 7th at one stage) but when Hamilton, Leclerc & Russell came out on fresh rubber they swiftly retook their previous positions. Stroll came into the pits on lap 30 from 10th place for his new set of hard tyres & came out 16th. Alonso came in a lap later to do the same & came out 15th. With the advantage of fresh tyres Alonso passed Bottas on lap 33 and Stroll did the same shortly after. At the halfway stage, lap 36, Alonso was in P13, Stroll P14. It was then announced that Stroll was under investigation for speeding in the pit lane during his pit stop and as there weren’t any mitigating circumstances he was handed a 5 second penalty. Back on track, there was a tremendous scrap between the Aston Martins and Albon and Gasly, with Alonso managing to pass Albon down the main start-finish straight on lap 41, Stroll doing the same on lap 43. At this stage the Aston Martins were still out of the points, in 11th & 12th, with Alonso needing to make up quite few seconds on Hulkenberg in order to secure a point. 21 laps later, Alonso managed to get within a second (and DRS range) of Hulkenberg and passed him with 9 laps to go. Stroll wasn’t able to repeat the feat, but it wouldn’t have mattered as he had to add the 5 second penalty to his time. At the finish, the race was won by Norris (bravo) and Alonso secured a point with a 10th place finish. Stroll was placed 13th after the 5 second penalty was applied.
Having both started in the top 10 it was disappointing to see the Aston Martins lose places and only score a point. After the race, Alonso said, "We knew that the top four teams would take the top eight positions today, so our fight was for P9 and P10. However, we didn't have the pace we needed and Pierre [Gasly] did a better job than us, so we had to settle for P10 and one point.” Stroll’s comments were, "We knew we had some faster cars starting behind us, so it wasn't a surprise to see Hamilton and Sainz passing us. From that point on, the focus was on holding position as we didn't really have the pace in the car to challenge for more. We'll debrief on this weekend and then shift our focus to Monza."
No respite for the teams then, they head straight to Monza (the temple of speed) for the Italian Grand Prix which is next weekend.